Talk:Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Regional/Cryptology

This looks like a cool honor. If the NAD decides to adopt it (or maybe have an advanced version) I think it should touch on these topics:

• symmetric/asymmetric cryptography keys
  • A symmetric key uses a single key to both encrypt and decrypt. Also called a shared key.
  • An asymmetric key system uses one key to encrypt and a different one to decrypt. Once a message is encrypted, the encryption key cannot be used to decrypt it.
• public/private keys
  • A form of asymmetric keys where one key is secret and the other is public. The public key can be used to encrypt a message that only the holder of the private key can decrypt. This is how end-to-end encrypted messaging systems work.
• Digital signatures
  • A message can be signed by encrypting a message with a private key. Anyone can decrypt it using the public key. The message could only have been encrypted by the one holding the private key (thus proving it came from that entity). This is basically the same as the end-to-end encryption as described above, except the public and private keys switch roles. It forms the basis of blockchain (i.e., Bitcoin).
• Diffie Hillman exchange
  • A way for two parties to create a secret key that they can share by combining their private keys over a public medium without actually exchanging or revealing their private keys, and without an eavesdropper being able to reconstruct the resultant secret shared key. Once they have a private shared key they can switch to symmetric cryptography which is way faster than asymmetric crypto. This is how https works.